The World-Wide Web ("the Web") is a collection of formatted hypertext pages and other information distributed among numerous computers logically connected by the Internet. The Web is a valuable resource for information relating to virtually any subject, including business, education, entertainment, and travel, to name just a few. Advances in Internet-related technology, such as Web browsers (software applications which provide a user interface to the Web), have made the Web accessible to a large segment of the population.
Despite rapid advances in Web browsers, however, access to the Web has until recently been limited to people who own a personal computer. Many people cannot afford a personal computer, however, and others have anxiety about using computers. In addition, certain Web browsers in the prior art generally do not provide the degree of user-friendliness desired by some people who lack computer experience, and many computer novices do not have the patience to learn how to use the software. In contrast, most people in modern society are quite comfortable with their television sets. Even ardent technophobes tend to view the television set as a familiar part of daily life. Most people are also comfortable using a remote control to operate a television set, a video cassette recorder (VCR), home audio system, or other electronic device. Consequently, WebTV Networks Inc., of Palo Alto, Calif., has developed technology to allow people to access the Web through their television sets. This technology is known as "WebTV.TM." and is currently available through Philips Magnavox and Sony Electronics Inc.
WebTV allows a person to access and navigate through Web pages using an ordinary television set and a remote control. More specifically, WebTV is designed so that a person can use a remote control to navigate between hypertext objects on a Web page with little effort or thought, so that a person feels more as if he is simply changing the channels on a television set, rather than using a complex, global computer network. Hence, one basic quality of WebTV is to make Web browsing more comfortable for people by making it feel more like watching television.
A person watching television sometimes has nothing specific that he wishes to watch. Accordingly, he can switch from channel to channel until he finds something interesting, or he can simply leave the television tuned to a particular channel and watch whatever is provided. In contrast with watching television, however, Web browsing tends to require more effort by the person to actively seek out and locate specific information. Information is often located through the use of software known as a search engine. Yet, as with watching television, a person may wish to browse the Web without having specific goal in mind, i.e., he may wish to "surf" the Web. Even if the person has a specific goal in mind, manually sifting through results of a Web search can be tiring. Therefore, it is desirable to make Web browsing even more like watching television, so that less effort is required by a person to view Web pages. In particular, it is desirable to allow a person to view a number of Web pages without having to specifically locate or request those Web pages.